Lionmom's Musings

I am still holding my breath, but so far, the buyer seems to be sticking. We have had the home inspection with what looks like fairly normal repairs needed. We Finally told the landscaper to finish his job, and that is coming along. We finally stopped making the house look like “Home Beautiful” and are starting to pack stuff!! We Might just make this stick, and get to move on time withoug having to rent out our house after all. It is Still not a done deal, because we have not yet signed the final papers, but it looks encouraging.

Is it possible I have sold my home?? We have been negotiating with a very difficult buyer for the past week, and today finally signed an agreement. In two days we have the inspection. They had essentially asked us to delay the landscape work we were in the progress of having done so they could see the house and yard, and then tried to extract price consessions because the work was not done. We nearly backed out because of all the game playing, but ultimately struck a deal that we can both live with. I only hope this is not a portent of things to come, because we are on the end of what we will put up with. If we have more problems with these people and don’t close the deal, we will go to plan “B” which is to rent out the house. At least we have a short escrow, so less time to have things go wrong. We will see.

Can you believe it?! The beat goes on with my home sale saga.

Well, we have decluttered, spruced up, cleaned up and in general have made things pretty with our house. After three months, still no offers. We have bought another house and want to scream. Can you say Stress!

The latest and greatest, was that we should try expanding the lawn to cater to the families with kids, thus making the house more generically appealing. OK, for us gardeners, who cut down on lawn as much as possible, this is a major renovation. We put up with a prima donna landscaper and passed. Then we got a bid from a great fellow, who was willing to really work with us and we struck a deal on the work to be done (at one third the cost of the prima donna).

He began work, taking out the raised beds and removing stepping stones and moving plants to make way for topsoil to be spread and sod laid, but a foot of snow the day after he began slowed things down — basically stopping the work for a week. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a potential buyer seems very interested in the house…this is a good thing…but she may not want Any more work done becase she is a gardener and wants to do work herself and ask for help with closing costs. However, she can’t write an offer until the end of the week, having us delay our landscaper’s work even further. This is driving me crazy and I am sure our guy. I want to be fair to him, but I also want a good offer. What’s a girl to do!! Argh!!

Here are my wishes for a Happy and Prosperous New Year to everyone!

Wishing all of you a

Very Merry Christmas!!

Happy Hanukkah everyone! Today is the first day of Hanukkah Hope you have a Happy one filled with light and laughter!

We are having a white one….over a foot of snow…the most snow I have had at home since I was a teenager. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the past week has been a wild one with snow, sleet, freezing rain and Very slippery streets. Driving is treacherous, so I am staying home from work. The rest of the week is due to have a little better weather except for Christmas eve and then will turn much nicer toward the weekend.

Home staging is the fine art of making your home look like it is everyone’s dream home so they will make that offer. You have a minimalist approach to furnishing and decorating to enhance the space but get buyers to picture themselves living there. So you depersonalize, declutter, remove unnecessary furniture, and bring in a neutral color palate with color punches where possible in pursuit of that goal. Moving outside, you make sure the home has curb appeal, so you tweak and clean up the landscape.

My previous post was about our adventures with our home sale and some of the difficulties we are encountering in the curb appeal/garden environment. I talked about the prima donna landscaper who gave us sticker shock with his estimate for work we wanted done outside.

I took a good look to evaluate what we really needed and where we could save money on the same job.
1) I didn’t need a landscape contractor for this job for the big bucks, because I am not doing a landscape makeover.
2) I really needed good working gardener who is hands on with some sense of design and knowledge of what works. (The person the landscape contractor would contract to actually do work such as this.)
3) I am able to contribute to some degree in design my own work (keeping in mind that it is getting colder – we are currently having a cold snap 15 degrees at night. Last week the night temp was 45 degrees).

All of these factors would save us some money. We have another bid coming in which I think is more in keeping with the above principles. I don’t yet know where his bid will come in, but I think it will be more doable.

One more installment in my house sale saga. We seem to be getting lookers, but no offers. So we keep going back to the drawing board. Why is no one offering? The house is spotless, large open floor plan, beautiful garden…..so why no offers? The market is one reason, it is truly a buyer’s market with lots to choose from and an economy in a recession and housing in a depression. Another reason, we thought could be a problem, is that we are major gardeners and not everyone else is. There is possibly too much garden for people to want to take care of, and that sentiment has been voiced by some lookers.

So, what do we do about this? One possibility is to reduce the number and size of our planting beds. We have neither the energy nor the time to do this ourselves, so we need to get someone to do it. Our realtor just sent a fellow over to give us a bid. In our minds we can get this done with $500-$800. Well the fellow she sent is a landscaper so he comes in with a big bucks estimate at well more than twice that amount. Can you say ChaChing? After the sticker shock we started talking to him about what could we accomplish with approximately the amount we have set aside, to which he launched into a justification of his talents, business practices and why he deserves the amount he is asking for. Needless to say, we decided that we really don’t want to deal with a prima donna, let alone not being able to afford him. So we are looking elsewhere.

Someone a neighbor had recommend to us came the next day. He couldn’t have been nicer. I don’t know yet what his bid will come in at, but he seemed understand of our price limitations and seemed willing to work with us. I think that even if he comes in higher than we feel we can afford, if he is in the ballpark, we will try to see how far we can actually stretch.

If you hve been reading this blog, you know that I have been trying to sell my house. This is going rather slowly, but we have been getting a lot more traffic than before, which is good news. What is happening now is that since we are relocating; I am leaving my job the end of January; and we have already been looking for a house in the new area. We have found something, and have made an offer that has been accepted.

This is very scary, since we have not yet sold our home. Our options are to continue trying to sell, rent out our current house or back out of a good job and come back. The last is not an option. The first option is the best one. Renting out our house is not our first choice, but may be what we need to do. We will need to take a gap loan to make this happen and will need to do some real belt cinching.

The thought is crazy making. I kept going through my mind what are some of the ways we can do this and still manage to have a life. I started thinking of all the ways we can do what we do now more cheaply and came up with a bunch of stuff.

So here goes! Some of my thoughts on living on the cheap:
. Coupon saving (we already do, but now we will need to do even more)
. Skip the latte – Dust off that home made latte machine and actually use it! Heck, I even thought of putting the money we would save making our own lattes into an envelope and then use it at the end of the month on something else.
. Skip the scones – Similar strategy. Make my own and freeze them. Then bring them out with a latte and bank the money we would save.
. Homemade cleaning liquids. They are a Lot cheaper than bought And most are non-toxic. ie. toothpaste as jewelry cleaner, baking soda to scour your sink, etc (I will write more later)
. Use compact flourescent bulbs – They save more electricity than incandescent. There are new high intensity LED light bulbs now, but they are rather pricey and not readily available. However, I think they will save money in the long run on electricity.
. Fill your gas tank in the morning. – It is cooler and you can get more gas in the tank.
. Hypermiling – Keep your hybrid car on cruise control to avoid a lot of acceleration which eats up gas and toggle the speed control with the up/down toggle.
. Find discount codes online for items you want to purchase. (I just saved $15 off an order I placed with Lands End by using an online discount code.)
. Consider a hybrid car. It is a little more expensive than a non-hybrid. However, tax rebates are available, depending on the model; and the savings on gas the pretty good.
. Weatherstip and caulk your windows.

Well, this is what I can think of right now, since it is 11 at night and I am fading. More to come.

Hi Everyone,

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!!

I am lucky enough to not have to cook this year. We have wrangled an invitation for a bird and all the trimings and good company to boot. I plan to make some of my rolls tonight though.

Be back Friday!!

Well, it has been awhile since I talked about my house. It is going slowly. My luck was to list the house just before the housing bubble burst and it has been sitting there for two months with only a few showings and no offers.

Our broker has been after us to drop the price and my own research has shown roughly where the comparable sales are. We finally decided to do just that. So I am fairly confident that we are fairly on the mark where the current market is without sacrificing too much of what we wanted.

We reduced the price today and have a showing Friday to someone who has already seen the house twice—(That is a good sign) We will see. Things seem to be picking up as far as showings are going. I just logged onto my Squidoo, USFreeads and Craigslist accounts and posted something about the price reduction. And now I am here posting it too!!

Wish us luck!!

Well, I have been making some incremental, but slow progress on my site rehabilitation plan.

I have now started posting to my blog for my Elvis Collectible Store Blog So far, I have two posts.

I tried to set up Caffeinated Content for this blog. So far I am having some trouble with this. It seems I need the activation code again and I can’t find it. I have e-mailed the vendor about the problem. Hopefully, I will have this done in a few days. Instead, I used the plugin on another site to get the information I wanted for my posts. Not optimum, but at least a workaround.

More to come

Hi All,
Well all is quiet now that the goblins have gone up and down our street with wide eyes, open bags and the ancient chant of “Trick Or Treat”! Not too many came this year because of the weather, but a few brave souls ventured out. Still, I do have candy left over…I hope not for me to eat….needs to go to the hungry souls at work.

My kitties only got to go outside for a short time this morning. I am concerned about someone harming a cat on Halloween, especially my black kitty. So I only let them out early in the day on Halloween and the day after. The rain was a little too much for them anyway, so they quickly returned.

Some thoughts about Halloween: We did very little this year although this is one of my favorite holidays. Too much going on with the sale of the house and all.

A shameless and scary plug goes out for my sister’s blog: Hollywood Ripper for everything Ripper in film and print (reviews, comments and the like) A virtual pat also goes out to her kitty, Rusty, from his other mother.

I recently wrote about several of my sites getting delisted by Google and gave a brief synopsis for Soggy’s site rehabilitation plan.

Update:
. Step 1 is to block the Google bot –
This has been done for all of the sites effected.
. Step 2 is to begin sprucing them up.
I have started doing this by rearranging some of the material in the site and deleting the links to some of my other sites which may be non-relevant to the site in question.
. Step 3 is to add a blog to each of the sites -
So far, I have only added a blog to one of these sites. I have not done much with it as yet.

So far, this has made error statements appear in the Google Webmaster Tools (I expected this) There has been little change in traffic. I am still listed for those sites with Yahoo and other search engines. Strangely, there seems to be slightly more traffic. Go figure!

The rest of the plan will probably go one step at a time.

I recently started noticing decreas ed traffic on several of my sites. To my dismay when I looked at the external links in Google Webmaster Tools, I saw “0″ external links. Panicked, I checked around only to discover that this meant that they had been delisted by Google.

What’s a girl to do? On the BANS forum I was directed to a post by Soggy He has posted a strategy to get relisted. It takes quite a bit of work, but seems worthwhile.

1) Step 1 is to block the Google bot from your site.
2) Spiff up the site, reorganize it, use new graphics, etc.
3) Then comes the hard part…add a blog to the site.
4) Use the blog or other material to add Lots of Content to the site. He suggests at least 30 pages of new content. Use social bookmarking on each post with at least five alternating social bookmarking sites per post.
5) Finally, unblock the Google bot and let them come to see the “New You”.

Supposedly, this process takes about 60 days to get relisted. For slow pokes like me, it could take longer than that. I have already started and have the bot blocked and some rearranging done on the sites. Next, comes the content.

I am trying to use some traffic generation methods to sell my house.  Some of the things I have done are write about it here in my blog.  I have a Lens on Squidoo. I have also been posting it on Craig’s List and USFreeAds. I am also Tweeting my efforts on Twitter. This is just to name a few. I have then taken these and used some of the other Social Networking and bookmarking sites, like Digg and Furl to spread the word.

I am also using some more conventional methods of advertising to spread the word like direct posting in my workplace newsletter (no, almost no one yet knows I am relocating yet) and on other bulletin boards.

I have noticed quite a bit of traffic on the sites I can track, but so far no offers. Yes, my house is listed with a broker in the MLS (#28157458) and my broker knows I am doing this. I feel that everything helps!! (So does she!)

These are just a few of the things I am doing using some Traffic Generaion techniques to get the word out. If anyone else has any good ideas, I would be happy to hear them as well.

I already know that I get good traffic from my Squidoo lenses to my BANS sites.  We have been having discussions about blogging and social networking as ways to add content to our sites and draw traffic.  So why the heck am I not using Squidoo more to rate other Squidoo member sites, and attracting them to my site?  I have not been doing this, yet it seems to be effective.

My new resolution is to use Squidoo more to do member to member communication, hopefully generating more traffic to my BANS lens and thus to my BANS sites.  Furthermore I resolve to use other social networking tools to do the same.

Hey, I need all the traffic I can get!!

This market is driving me crazy.  Stocks are down, up, down some more.  My stock portfolio is disappearing then reappearing then disappearing again.  My house, which I am trying to sell, is getting few showings.  What’s a girl to do? 

Fear says to get the hey out, common sense says to stay the course and even continue contributing to my 403b – dollar cost averaging and all that stuff!  How much can you average when  you are getting ready to retire anyway.   Well, I have no choice but to keep on keeping on!

I am reminded in another  post I saw on a Squidoo lens of a quote from Frank Herbert’s “Dune”

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain. ^[1]

I think it is very applicable to the current economic climate.   We will live and exist through the hard times and come out the other side…perhaps even stronger.  We need only to keep reminding ourselves of this fact.

Hey All,
I am making a Really Shameless Plug about selling my house in Olympia Washington. If you live near here or are considering living here, check out my house. The house is beautiful! See the pictures at – My House Pictures for the full information.

I am listed with Mary Sears, a Broker with Coldwell Banker (360-789-3378). The house is a 2 story 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, a family room, formal dining, fireplace, covered patio with a spa tub in the master bath. The yard is perfect for gardeners and has raised beds in the back yard. We are asking $267,500 – a very good price for the area.

For those of you who don’t know, Olympia is the Capitol of Washington. It is one of the prettiest cities I have ever lived in. I would not be moving if I had not gotten a good job in Salem Oregon. Olympia has a nice downtown, great farmer’s market and good mall. The city runs into Lacey and Tumwater. There is a terrific mix of people, running from our legislators to the rather conservative military folks from the bases nearby to very liberal Evergreen State College kids and the greeners. We have a Zone 8 climate (hard to believe since we are so far north). The coldest it gets is the low 20′s. The warmest it gets is in the 90′s. Normal temperatures are a little more moderate than that, athough it occasionally exceeds the lows and highs.

I love this place, you will too! If you are at all thinking of this area, consider my house. The links are listed above and there is a home slide show. Check it out!! End Really Shameless Plug!

Yes, I have been trying to get into the swing of having a blog attached to my website. I have one attached to my site Victorian Antique Shop Blog I do believe that I have noticed a slight uptick in the number of visitors I am getting to my site. I have not noticed increased sales, however.

Reporting on Mark Hanson’s series on his blog The Niche Store Builder. He is now getting into the nitty gritty of setting up the WordPress part of the site and configuring plugins. It is an interestig series, although I have not been able to follow along as well as I had hoped. I definitely plan to catch up.